Why I Released Free iOS Icons When Others Made Thousands of Dollars

How to hit or miss a trend

It’s not clickbait. This really happened to numerous designers that were there at the right time. About 6 months ago, a trend hit the internet that made many people a lot of money: iOS 14 icons. Here’s why I created my own iOS 14 icon packs, tried to sell them, and then decided to give them away for free.

Custom icons on iOS

Apple has never been fond of giving the user customization opportunities like Android. They still don’t really. But bright people have always come up with clever ways to customize iOS as much as possible. Last year, one of the biggest trends on iOS was customizing the home screen with non-native app icons. For this, you don’t need much. You need the Shortcuts app (Apple-owned app, free on the App Store), a cool icon pack or icon image files, and some time. This story is not a tutorial on how to do this. You’ll find one here. 
In this story, I want to tell you how I created a few icon packs and started offering them for free in 2021.

Hit or miss a trend

There is a great…